


The Uphill Climb

by mortalitasi



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 3 - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 14:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2195886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How are you supposed to decide about anything when the world's falling apart and burning down around your ears and you're losing people faster than you can count them? </p>
<p>She's Shepard. It's supposed to be her job - and she's beginning to think she can't do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Uphill Climb

**Author's Note:**

> sloooowly getting to uploading my stuff here, but i just have so mUCH, ffs. well. hope you enjoy!

She’s sitting in the seat on the starboard side of the pilot’s bridge, watching the stars drift by, when EDI comes back to the cockpit.

Doesn’t say anything when the AI walks past her and stands next to the reinforced glass separating them and the endless, silent vacuum of space. They stay like that for a moment, quiet, reflective, both preferring to focus on something unspoken instead of relying on sound for once. Yma doesn’t move, not even to bring the lip of the bottle of raspberry beer she’d been looking forward to having all week to her mouth. It seems like the taste has gone, or changed, or somehow turned into something that doesn’t affect her any longer. Maybe it’s her that’s changed.

“You have not slept in two twenty-four hour cycles, Shepard,” EDI says, and Yma almost laughs. Always straight to the point. She knows better than to argue.

“No, I haven’t,” she agrees leniently, instead, and fixes her eyes on the distant purple flare of a galaxy shining on the black horizon, wondering how long it’d take for them to get there.

“Humans require at least ten hours of repose on average to continue optimal functioning,” EDI goes on, the tips of her chrome-plated fingers dancing along the tall back of the empty pilot’s seat. Jeff turned in about five hours ago, like he always does, at ten forty two PM, the way he has been since his time in the Academy. Shepard wishes her schedule were as regular.

“They do,” Yma agrees again, and sips casually at her beer.

“Then why do you not partake?” EDI asks. She sounds mystified.

Or, rather, as mystified as an AI can sound. It’s difficult to remember what she is, especially when she assimilates language the way she does—and when she’s as personable, and easy-humored, and intelligent. It’s only at times when she does something like process fifty million requests within the space of a third of a second that it becomes evident again. EDI doesn’t have bad days, or sleepless nights, or dips in her efficiency on the battlefield. A year ago, Yma thought she couldn’t feel, either. Now… that’s not so sure a thing as it used to be.

“Some nights I can’t,” Yma says, sitting up and forward, spreading her legs and propping her elbows up on her knees, the bottle clasped loosely between them in her tired hands. “Too many things inside my head.”

“It is inconvenient that organics do not possess something like a shutdown button,” EDI notes and turns her sharp, clear eyes to the lifted shutters over the outer portion of the cockpit.

“You can say that again.”

EDI looks at her strangely, and then starts, “It is inconvenient that organics—” Stops. Blinks.

“…EDI?”

“That was a joke.”

Yma snorts and nearly loses her grip on the bottle, but saves it last minute. “You’re getting better.”

A hint of a smile. She looks frighteningly human when she does that. It makes the guilt and unpleasant knot of nerves in Yma’s chest tighten, nearly to the point of pain. “Thank you, Shepard.”

There’s a pause as Yma pretends to go back to looking at the stars, but any remaining desire to really stargaze has burned out of her, just like almost everything else. God. Since when has she been this tired? Never. She never has. Not even after Akuze. Just like then, she can picture herself lying down to sleep and doing no waking up. The thought doesn’t bother her. It at no time really has. Maybe that’s why she’s so good at what she does.

“Something is troubling you.”

“I wish it were just the one,” Yma sighs, leaning her head back against the seat’s neck cushion.

“There have been no recent intense stressors except for the incident on Rannoch,” EDI says as though she’s discussing the weather. “The most logical deduction is that the events there have adversely affected your state of mind.”

“Guilty as charged.” The commander rubs a hand across her eyes and pulls it down her face. Pulling teeth would be pleasanter than admitting this. “Rannoch made me think. About you.”

EDI turns to her in genuine surprise. “Me?” The word sounds strange coming from something that’s supposed to be a nebulous collection of programs and processes.

She’s caught them before, being silly, with EDI running her fingers through the bristles of Jeff’s short beard, trying to get used to the sense of touch. They joke with each other, though Jeff is always the louder of the two— he often laughs the kind of laughter that he needs to stop before he breaks something around EDI. The lack of news from Tiptree had drained everything colorful and endearingly obnoxious from Jeff; but near her, he’s begun to look close to the Jeff Moreau Yma knew when the skies were clear of Reapers and the biggest of their problems was a guy who baited them onto Collector ships.

He’s happy, or parts of him are. He’s found something good, in the middle of all the chaos, and the death, and the ongoing goddamn apocalypse, and Yma knows he might not be able to keep it. That’s just not a guarantee, but it’s not that that bothers her. It’s not that. She could wake up and lose Garrus tomorrow. Kenny could lose Gabriella, like Tali lost Reegar, like Thane lost Irikah. The world is full of people living on in the stead and in the shadow of the absences of their most beloved.

“Something the Reaper said,” Yma finally manages to get past the burning in her throat. “When this whole thing is over—ending it—I...”

She can’t get the words out. She’s screamed over the wail of batarian cannon fire and walked out of a smoking plain littered with what was left of fifty of the closest things to family she’s ever had, looked an infant Reaper in the face and seen the end of everything in the scarlet expanse of its glaring eye, but she can’t say this. Not without breathing deep. She’s not going to cry. She’s just exhausted and overworked and there’s too much going on at once.

“Shepard?” EDI prompts softly.

Her knuckles turn white as her grip tightens on the bottle. “Organics and synthetics. If it comes down to it, I’ll choose—I’ll  _always_  choose…”

And the expression that moves across EDI’s face is something that would have made this whole thing infinitely easier if she were still a faceless blue blob with a pretty voice, not in a body that looks organic even though it’s got chinks and plating and a lovely orange visor. The alloy over her cheeks feels like fibrous metal that’s halfway there to being skin, but when her body temperature emulators are off, it’s unsettling more than anything—and the lines around her mouth that appear when she frowns or draws her lips in too tight smoothen out when she looks the way she does now.

Yma drops her eyes to the floor beneath her boots. It’s too hard to keep her head up. She only starts when she feels EDI’s cool hand on her shoulder. When she looks up, EDI is smiling. It’s small, and it’s sad, but it’s real. It’s so real.

“I understand,” she says, and it bring a new wave of heat to Yma’s eyes.

“Shit,” Shepard whispers, voice thick with tears. “I’m sorry.”

The hand slips away. “An apology would only be needed if you were responsible.”

Yma just squeezes her eyes shut, pressing her fingers to the corners as though that will make the stinging in them vanish. She’s watched friends without number die, but being the one to have to kill them is not something she’s ever done or felt, and she does not want to become familiar with the experience. It’s enough that she’s always the last one standing, never the casualty, forever resigned to being the idiot who has to bravely carry on and live with a growing audience of ghosts at her side.

“Would you like to be alone?”

She asks that as though she’s not everywhere at once, as though they’re not walking inside her and the Normandy isn’t her and not her at the same time—Yma knows she asks because it’s more comfortable for the organic mind to think that there isn’t anything beyond the body. EDI’s always been thoughtful like that.

“No,” she croaks. “Please.”

Shepard thinks about reaching out, but opts against it. Too needy.

“Please. Just…  _stay_.”


End file.
